According to this article, if your nagged (by your wife) or bugged (by your husband) repeatedly, it makes for an unhappier life and potential depression, or at least it feels that way.

That makes sense. The constant repetitiveness of such criticism has to cause stress, and we all know that too much stress makes for psychological repercussions in the mindset of the one experiencing the stress.

So, nagging wives, lay off the husband if he's at least trying to satisfy your wishes. Husbands, stop bugging the wife about not having a fresh cooked gourmet meal on the table exactly at six every night and for not being ready to play in the garden of sexual delight and kinkiness every other night at 10 on the dot, looking fresh and smelling great.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Awhile ago on this blog, I wrote about Lauren Stoner. She was movie director Michael Bay's girlfriend for an undetermined amount of time, and she was on a reality TV show for a very short run. Turns out one of the links I had then now doesn't have what it had when I originally linked to it. Oh well, if you need that, here it is again (NSFW): Lauren Stoner suns topless in Miami

She still has a phenomenal body. The thing is, she doesn't have any obvious form of income. She must do SOMETHING that allows her the free time of hitting the beach to demonstrate how phenomenal her body is. What that something is, we don't appear to know. (As demonstrated here.) Further Google sleuthing indicated that she is listed as an Alexa Model, though. Hard to tell if that's recent work, but the lingerie shot is quite fetching.

So, speaking of fetching, I fetched the three most recent Daily Mail articles about Miss Stoner's appearances on the Miami beaches. I would think she could get some work as a bikini model in some capacity!

Regarding this, the chapter containing the pivotal and climactic events of the book is entitled "The Clouds Burst", and I don't think that would make a lot of sense to the general public. And in the Tolkien histories, the climactic battle is indeed called The Battle of the Five Armies (here's a reference that shows this factoid). After all, "The Desolation of Smaug" wasn't a chapter title either, it was a region shown on the map next to the Lonely Mountain.

So even if it is bombastic, it also makes a lot of sense. And I'm looking forward to seeing the battle that I first read about when I was 11 years old.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Even though as I write this things have already changed, one thing hasn't changed. Before the start of play in the Barclays Premier League this weekend, it was already mathematically impossible for Crystal Palace FC to be relegated this season - i.e., be sent down to the second tier of British football (which we call soccer) by dubious virtue of being one of the bottom three teams in the Premier League point standings.

This article reviews the status of all the times that could still get relegated, and as you'll note, the Palace is not among them. In fact, when the article was written, CP was in 11th place.

It's a remarkable turnaround for a team that just moved up, and didn't look too hot to start the season. But new manager Tony Pulis and his new philosophy, plus a couple of effective transfer players, got them going and got them moving up. The quirky take-the-points and run victory over mighty Chelsea (who I still like as a team) was pretty useful in moving them from possible relegation to nearly in the top 10.

Now that Liverpool is probably going to win the Premier League title, the most drama is left for the relegation-or-not showdowns of the next couple of weeks.

The Mars Curiosity Rover acquired an interesting image a couple of days ago. It captured the Martian moon Deimos and the asteroids Vesta and Ceres in the same frame. Recall, Vesta is where the Dawn satellite was and Ceres is where the Dawn satellite is going.

The problem was, the drop was touching the previous drops in the beaker (actually bending the teardrop stem of the previous one). When they attempted to remove the beaker after this historic "touchdown" (see the link) so that
the drop could actually fall, the pitch column in the funnel exercised its thixotropic rights and broke.

Darn. It would have been interesting to actually see it fall all the way, but it wasn't going to fall the right way with the other drops in the way.

I wonder now if there is another kind of really-slow flowing liquid that isn't as slow as pitch. It would be interesting to set up an experiment like this where drops would fall like once every few days to a few weeks or months.

I think I'll try peanut butter. But Silly Putty (which you can make at home if you look up the recipe) also works, and supposedly it's more viscous than peanut butter.

This is one way of defining the top 0.1%. Because the other 99.9% of the women in the human race don't look like this at 33 and after bearing two kids the natural way (by carrying and birthing them herself).

Unless the chambers decide to suspend their rules and take up matters
not on their agendas, they will finish the day as they started — with no
plan to fund schools, colleges, local governments and all manner of
state services for the next two years.

and

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and a narrow majority in the evenly divided
Senate say expanding Medicaid would help 400,000 uninsured Virginians
and help the state’s economy. The GOP-dominated House says that
Washington cannot afford to keep its promise to pay most of the cost,
estimated at $2 billion a year.

and

A.E. Dick Howard, a constitutional law expert at the University of
Virginia, said there would have to be a way to keep essential functions
of government operating. He noted that the constitution vests the chief
executive with certain powers that “at least raise the question of
whether the governor has some inherent power to save the commonwealth
from destruction.”

Switzerland is land-locked, but it also has some fairly large lakes. Two of them have lighthouses. Lake Geneva has a few actual lighthouses, one that's apparently pretty famous, for which it is easy to find lots of pictures of. The other one is less famous, and because it is in close proximity to a very large water fountain, sometimes it is not noticed. But it is there. It is called the Jetée du Sud Light ("Southern Jetty" light, I would think). The first picture shows it with the fountain (full size here). The second one shows just the lighthouse itself. The third one shows the most famous one in the distance with the Jetée du Sud Light in the foreground.

Monday, April 21, 2014

The IPCC, much reviled by know-very-little-but-think-they-know-it-all climate change skeptics, is an organization that calls climate change like it is: happening now, caused by humans, very likely to get worse.

And since climate change is their thematic centrality, they don't worry much about some of the things that worry the rest of humankind, such as the peripheral issues surrounding safe, clean, low emission nuclear power.

Because of that, they are calling for a BIG increase in humankind's nuclear generating capacity to forestall the worst climate change paths that humanity could be headed upon.

"At the global level scenarios reaching 450 ppm are also
characterized by more rapid improvements in energy efficiency, a
tripling to nearly a quadrupling of the share of zero- and low-carbon
supply from renewables, nuclear energy AND fossil energy with carbon capture and storage (CCS) OR bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) by the year 2050. (p. 15)"

That's what has to happen. If we are to keep on a path that avoids the worst climate calamities that we are currently creating for ourselves.

Believe it or not, it has been 10 days since I last wrote here. Did anyone notice? Well, probably not. Such is my lot, to be little heard and seldom seen. But I will still stake my place in the electronic maelstrom which we call the Web.

I even missed my Lighthouse of the Week last week. But I'll have one for this week, tomorrow.

I confirmed a few things while on the break. Here are some of them.

1. Gelato is one of mankind's highest culinary creations. There is probably no such thing as a bad gelato.

2. You can go home again, but home will have changed while you were gone.

3. Sometimes someone you know will have appeared to have followed a less fortunate path in life than you, and then with one critical decision, they will have followed a more fortunate path in life than you.

4. It hurts when the home team loses, even if they aren't your home team. And it feels good when the home team wins, even if they aren't your home team.

5. Young women with firm buttocks, large breasts, and flat tummies are still very attractive to me, especially when they are nearly completely exposed and only a few feet away from me.

So those are some of my observations while observing -- and not commenting.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Up in the Washington suburbs north of here, they had the high school Metro Championship swim meet a few weeks ago. This is essentially the state championships of Maryland, a state that doesn't have swimming statewide as a sport, but nonetheless seems to be regularly producing pretty good swimmers (Mike Barrowman, Anita Nall, Katie Hoff, Jack Conger who set the 500-yard freestyle record for boys last year, some guy named Phelps, too).

Well, now Metro Maryland is also the home of Katie Ledecky. Katie looked a bit tired in December, but at the Metros she was rested and ready. So she proceeded to become the first woman ever to break 4:30 in the 500-yard freestyle, a new American, U.S. Open, and of course high school record. She did this in the prelims, because she had something else to do in the finals, which was to smash the high school record in the 200-yard freestyle.

Now, I looked around and around and around, but could not find a video of the record-breaking 500-yard swim end-to-end. I did find what I think is the end of that race; see below. She won the 500 in the finals, about 3 seconds slower, and that video is available. If you're interested, go find it. I did find the 200, which is also below.

It may sound trite to say that is pretty impressive swimming. But it sure is.

It's a box jellyfish. Those lovely tentacles hold a very powerful venom. If a swimmer encounters the box jellyfish and gets the tentacles on them, it's extremely painful. The pain can cause swimmers to go into shock; in the water they can drown.

Box jellyfish can kill. It's no laughing matter.

If a box jellyfish victim comes ashore with the tentacles still attached, the standard way to treat the stinging tentacles has been to wash them off with vinegar (if it's available - if not, urine can work too, but not as well. Seriously.) New research has indicated that maybe that isn't the best way to do it. But the research was attacked as not being conducted in such a way as to be comparable to the situation when a swimmer actually has tentacles on their skin.

So now there's this scientific debate going on about whether or not washing off the tentacles with vinegar is a good protocol to follow, or not. All of which is very scientifically interesting and proper, but when someone has burning, stinging box jellyfish tentacles on their skin, they aren't interested in the specifics, because they are danger of DYING. So, based on the current state of the science, if a swimmer gets stung by a box jellyfish, don't consult the Internet to see what to do. Wash them off with vinegar as fast as possible.

(Of course, if you're accidentally reading this because you're searching for how to treat someone that's been stung by a box jellyfish, then you didn't follow my advice. OK, take care of that unfortunate victim NOW!)

"One of the simplest ways to slow the pace of climate change is by levying a fee on greenhouse gas emissions.

Putting
a price on burning oil, gas, and coal that reflects the damage
inflicted on the environment will make renewable energy alternatives
(like solar, geothermal, and wind) and energy-reducing investments more
competitive.

Our friend Alan Rushforth lives near Philadelphia and
started a small solar-powered water-heating business a few years ago.
Even with state and federal subsidies, it took Rushforth Solar's
customers five to seven years to break even compared with the cost of
installing natural gas heaters, so it was a tough sell.

"If there
were a 10 to 15 percent fee on carbon pollution, with a schedule of more
increases to come, it would light a fire under all sorts of energy
saving technologies and behaviors," Alan said. "Not just hot water
solar."

And I must myself point out -- taxing carbon emissions would provide funds for the R&D required to bring small modular nuclear reactors into the market and energy mix.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

"The proposal this week from [newly elected Chilean President] Bachelet calls for charging thermal power
plants with a generation capacity of at least 50 megawatts a tax of $5
per metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted. Chile is the world’s leading
copper producer, and many copper mines in the country are powered by
coal-fired power plants that rely on imported oil and gas to operate.

“These companies can incorporate technologies to reduce pollutants or
simply change the fuel they use,” Chile’s new environmental minister,
Pablo Badenier, toldlocal media. “Once you have the taxation in place, you open a range of possibilities to reduce emissions.”

That's very much right. And something the U.S. government needs to learn - fast.

"All of the nitrogen currently polluting the Potomac River estuary could be removed if 40 percent of its river bed were used for shellfish cultivation, according to the joint study. The researchers determined that a combination of aquaculture and restored oyster reefs may provide even larger overall ecosystem benefits. Oysters, who feed by filtering, can clean an enormous volume of water of algae which can cause poor water quality."

When Rick Perry was about to enter, and then entered, the 2012 Presidential race, I tabbed him the Most Dangerous Man in America. That's because he was good looking, and was bringing an evangelical Christian, Tea Party appealing message to the race (and was much more of a conservative than Mitt Romney could ever be). Part of Perry's dangerousness was that he appears to believe everything he says, and he says some pretty darned stupid, er, far right-wing, things. Remember, this is a guy who suggested Texas could and maybe should secede from the Union.

However, I thought that his unsuccessful and unceremonious run for the nomination would end his Presidential aspirations. He appeared to be in over his head, and he's also an intellectual lightweight. But apparently he's gotten healthier (he had some back problems), and maybe also smarter, at least about why he lost the last time. So according to the article, he's considering running again, and might have a better chance this time.

So if he does, he then immediately becomes the Most Dangerous Man in America - again.

Monday, April 7, 2014

"As we’ve seen in the case of Americans for Prosperity’s ads, the individual horror stories have withered away under scrutiny — call it the “Incredible Shrinking Obamacare Sob Story.” Now we’re seeing that the broader GOP narrative about the law — that even if it hit sign-up targets, overall it has hurt more people than it has helped — is also getting whittled away by more and more evidence. Of course, it cannot be true that the law is functioning more or less as intended – Obamacare is fatally flawed; Republicans never entertained any other possibility – so therefore it isn’t."

The question is: can the Dems sell the reversal effectively through to the November elections?

Crystal Palace defeated Cardiff City 3-0 last weekend, pushing them up to 34 points and ahead of a couple more teams in the Barclay's Premier League, and further away from the danger of relegation. Now, to answer my question in the title, they aren't safe. They've got to get a few more points to be safe.

Puncheon's second goal was marvelous.

Here's their last six games:

BPL

12 Apr 2014

v Aston Villa

BPL

16 Apr 2014

v Everton

BPL

19 Apr 2014

v West Ham

BPL

27 Apr 2014

v Man City

BPL

5 May 2014

v Liverpool

BPL

11 May 2014

v Fulham

None of those are easy, with the possible exception of the lifesaver last game against Fulham. I would hazard that if they get four more points they are probably safe, and with six more points they are pretty definitely safe. They are actually tied right now on points with Aston Villa, their opponents next weekend, and they are only three points behind West Ham, who they play on the 19th. By the time they get to Manchester City and Liverpool, games they aren't likely to win, they'll know if the situation is desperate or not.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

The Daily Mail had an article about Victoria's Secret model named Edita Vilkeviciute, which had pictures of sunbathing topless on the beach. The article has lot and lots and lots and lots of pictures of Edita topless on the beach, but because it's public news Web site and not something else more prurient, the niceness of her model-class figure is spoilt by pixelation.

Now, I had not heard of Edita before. So, disturbed by this digital photographic disfigurement, I went searching for these same pictures without the adjustment for our modesty. And I couldn't find any of these particular pictures un-retouched.

What I did find out during this short survey is that Edita has been photographed topless (and bottomless, and both) many times. Most of those times in a tasteful fashion. And she's worth seeing in that state.

Below is an example of her NOT topless, but still demonstrating why topless, bottomless, and both is a very good way for her to be.

Just a brief comment from me about the ruling several days ago by the international court of law that the Japanese "scientific" whaling program in the Antarctic -- the one that has become both famous and infamous due to the harassment campaign of the Sea Shepherds ("Whale Wars") -- is illegal. They basically said it really isn't for science, it's for the purpose of killing whales to sell their meat and other whale products.

Taking quotes out of it doesn't do it justice, because it flows and connects and makes sense as a comprehensive whole.

But I have to at least offer up a flavor.

"However the court of US public opinion – anti-science,
anti-intellectual, and driven by a fundamentalist approach to the
Bible - is fiercely resistant to reason because (as I wrote last week)
it has conflated rationalism with scientific materialism and moral
decay.

In both 2008 and 2012 it was only the hardcore candidates denied
evolution outright – Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Sam
Brownback - but plenty of others, like Mitt Romney, took the position
of theistic evolutionists, but were careful to equivocate sufficiently
to allow the grassroots to feel safe in their convictions.

Only the outliers – Jon Huntsman, an out-and-out evolutionist, and
Newt Gingrich, an intellectual Catholic who simultaneously accepts the
science of evolution and God-as-creator as part of his religious
philosophy, adopted a position consistent with reason.

Why does this matter? Well, it just shows how entrenched the forces of opposition are to reason on climate change."

How's that?

And then there's the finishing lines:

"Imagine for a moment if the argument could be won, and America threw
its full weight behind developing the technologies - agriculture,
energy, water management, transport - that could change the way we live.

America had its "Sputnik moment" when faced with the threat of the
rising Soviet Union: that put a man on the moon, and laid the
foundations for a new era of science and technology that changed the
world.

Today, the rising tides of the oceans needs to spur another great
burst of human invention, but unlike the threat of Communism which
united the world's most powerful nation, the threat of climate change
now divides it. That bodes ill for us all."

That would mean giving up their campaign issue, and for many in the Tea Party, their raison d'etre. Even though they are wrong, they think that Obamacare is one more step toward total government control over every aspect of our lives -- actually, total government control over the parts of our lives they don't want to control, because if it has to do with the education of our kids or our reproductive rights, they want to control that. As long as the right things are being taught - like the Earth being 6,000 years old -- and not the wrong things -- like the fact that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is making the world get warmer.

But let's get back to the point at hand. They're wrong about Obamacare -- and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Postthinks they should admit it.

A key section:

"So let’s say it out loud: The ACA is doing exactly what its supporters said it would do. It is getting health insurance to millions
who didn’t have it before. (The Los Angeles Times pegged the number at
9.5 million at the beginning of the week.) And it’s working especially
well in places such as Kentucky, where state officials threw themselves
fully and competently behind the cause of signing up the uninsured.
Those who want to repeal the law will have to admit that they are
willing to deprive these people, or some large percentage of them, of
insurance.

Too many conservatives would prefer not to say upfront
what they really believe: They don’t want the federal government to
spend the significant sums of money needed to get everyone covered.
Admitting this can sound cruel, so they insist that their objections are
to the ACA’s alleged unworkability, or to “a Washington takeover of the
health system” (which makes you wonder what they think of Medicare, a
far more centralized program). Or they peddle isolated horror stories
that the fact-checkers usually discover are untrue or misleading."

So, like many other Tea Party-led conservative causes of the day, what they say is usually at least a 90 degree angle off the truth, and commonly more than that.

Now, we have to go and convince the American people about this, in sufficient numbers to keep the Senate under Democratic control. And also because that's one of my undangerous predictions.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Every now and then the Daily Mail checks in with the royals of Monaco, most specifically former swimmer now Princess Charlene nee Wittstock, who it originally appeared had married Prince Albert for the specific and pretty much only purpose of bearing a legitimate child by him (as he had already managed to have a couple of the illegitimate variety). While she and Prince Albert looked reasonably happy to be together at Monaco's annual Rose Ball bash, the willowyness of her still-slim athletic figure was indicative that her state was still non-preggers.

So the question remains - is she going to bear the heir, or not? Only time will tell. It should be pointed out that she's 36, so time should be telling pretty soon if birthing the babe was on the agenda, or not.

I should note that somewhat unlucky in love Princess Caroline was there too.

Poor Max George of the band The Wanted. He was engaged to gloriously luscious Michelle Keegan, blew that up by cheating on her, then briefly had a fling with current hot top swimsuit and lingerie model Nina Agdal. I'm not surprised (or unhappy) that didn't work out, considering Nina is barely out of her teens (22, actually), so I didn't expect her to settle down.

"Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) slammed the proposal
as "Kochtopia," or fulfilling the requests of conservative businessmen
Charles and David Koch, who are financing tens of millions of dollars
in advertisements this year to discredit Democratic congressional
candidates. And House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters
that the proposal is "an unserious partisan budget" and "as unrealistic
as previous budgets — and some would argue even more so."

"The basic GOP gamble is that Obamacare is so plainly a disaster that
Republicans cannot fail to win big this fall by campaigning against it,
and that taking any policy risks could upset this dynamic. But they
appear to have not even considered the possibility that the law could
work tolerably over time."

I occasionally check in on the world's slowest experiment, the Pitch Drop experiment now called The Ninth Watch at the University of Queensland in Australia.

"Ninth" refers to the ninth drop, which is due. What's interesting is that there is actually visible monthly motion in the drop now.

In a three-month comparison, November 2013 - January 2014, the movement is even more obvious.

My prediction is that the drop will fall by the end of July 2014. The question in my mind is how long it will be obvious that it will only be a matter of days before it actually falls. The "other" pitch drop experiment, at Trinity College in Dublin, finally yielded a pitch drop in July 2013. If you watch the video, it's clear that there was a final several day "stretch" of the upper part of the drop before it fell. That ought to happen with the Queensland experiment's ninth drop, which should get into the news. The thing is, as the pictures show, it is definitely getting heavier and descending. If you watch a slow-motion video of a water drop, you can see that the descent gets much faster just before it drops, and the top of the drop narrowing accelerates pretty drastically.

So if the pitch drop is starting to move faster, it really is due to fall soon.

Wow. It's only April 1st, and another one of my undangerous predictions for 2014 has proven correct. This one is Number 4, predicting that there would be at least one 8+ on the Richter Scale earthquake this year. Well, that one came right about 3 hours ago when an 8.2 or so quake hit off the coast of Chile. We'll have to keep watching for a day or so to see if a tsunami hits across the Pacific (hope not).

What got me was that I actually wrote this as part of my prediction: " Stretching - where? I think South America is due. "